Trang Page 7

  Chapter 7

  As Philippe peered into the murk, he thought he saw a dark shape approaching.

  “Two o’clock, Trang.” Raoul’s voice sounded into his ear.

  “I see it,” said Philippe. Underwater, his voice sounded distorted and unsteady.

  It looked like a torpedo coming straight at him, big and gray, with stripes of darker gray radiating out from its pointed front. The torpedo slowed as it came near him, and Philippe noticed that it had long, vibrating fins on either side of its body. It stopped and gradually sank down until the point of its front end was about level with Philippe’s chin and what Philippe assumed was its belly was resting on the floor.

  The front of the creature suddenly opened up. What had seemed to be a striped head was actually a mass of feathery tentacles that the alien had been holding together as it swam. It moved closer to Philippe and began touching him with its tendrils.

  Its touch was incredible. The feathery tentacles were each covered with little finger-like nubs—Philippe could feel them through his lonjons. Each nub was vibrating, relaxing the muscles under Philippe’s skin.

  He closed his eyes as the creature’s tentacles surrounded him, embraced him. He barely noticed as they tipped him forward.

  I should probably open my eyes, he thought.

  The tentacles were still around him, but he realized that he had been drawn in and was facing the creature’s—face? Closed eyelid? Some sort of fissure in the creature’s main body. It began to open, and Philippe had just enough time to feel a surge of panic before the tentacles gave a mighty shove and he was inside.

  “Hey!” a voice screamed in his ear.

  “Trang! Trang! Trang!”

  “Holy fuck!”

  “Trang! Oh, shit, Trang!”

  “I’m OK,” Philippe said.

  “Fuck!”

  “Trang! Trang!”

  “I’m OK! I’m OK!” Philippe yelled. “For fuck’s sake, don’t DO anything!!”

  His outburst quieted the SFers. A phrase favored by one of Philippe’s mentors floated into his head: Talk to people in their own language.

  He hit his translation mike, turning it on.

  “You say you’re OK?” Shanti’s voice.

  “I’m absolutely fine,” said Philippe. “I’ve got my translation mike on, and I am really happy to be here and meeting what I assume to be the Little Swimmers.”

  “You are correct in your assumption,” said his earplant, as the creature emitted a whistling sound.

  Philippe was in what he hoped was not the belly of the whale. But he was definitely inside something, presumably one of the Big Swimmers, who was still holding on to him with its vibrating tentacles.

  Around him, everything was glowing. The walls were giving off a faint and even light interrupted by gnarls of brightness.

  The brightness was enough to illuminate the Little Swimmers, who were positively gaudy. Some were striped, some were spotted, some were splotched, but all were a riot of intense color: yellow, red, green, blue, and purple. They had tentacles too, surrounding round, fat bodies. They crawled along the walls like octopi, pushing and pulling themselves with their tentacles, but when they sat still, they rested with their tentacles in the air, making them look more like sea anemones.

  The one that had spoken to Philippe was sitting directly in front of his face, but it turned over and crawled away. Another, with orange splotches on a vivid violet background, took its place. Philippe noticed that both had black, wiry growths on their bodies, which he didn’t see on any of the other Little Swimmers—with the exception of one, with green-and-yellow stripes and a prominent black growth, who promptly crawled over to where Philippe was as well.

  Was the growth some kind of badge? A weapon? A fungus? Just a coincidence?

  “Greetings, human diplomat,” said the one with the orange splotches. “We thank you for agreeing to come here in order to speak with us. We hope that this conversation will help the people of our planet learn more about you.”

  “On behalf of the humans, I thank you for wanting to speak with me,” said Philippe.

  “Let us begin. Please tell us about yourself, and the position you occupy within human society.”

  He was being held sideway, in water, inside an alien, outside the Milky Way, but still it wasn’t hard for Philippe to fall into the familiar routine. “I am, as you mentioned, a diplomat. I have spent a long time traveling around my planet, trying to settle disputes among different people so that they do not have to resort to warfare and violence.”

  The questions continued. He was asked if by “different” people he meant different species or different groups within the same species; he explained that, alas, war had not been eliminated on Earth, although he hoped one day it would be; he mentioned that there were marine animals on Earth as well and that some of them were fairly intelligent, although they did not build space ships.

  The style of the questions felt familiar, and Philippe realized that this chat was an interview—quite possibly a media interview. One apparently aimed at people who knew literally nothing about Earth.

  Were the black growths cameras?

  Whatever was going on, Philippe became even more careful in his answers. The splotched Little Swimmer asked several questions regarding humanity’s relationship to other species on Earth, so Philippe answered them in the most positive way possible—he might annoy animal-rights activists on his own planet, but he didn’t want the Swimmers to think that humans were dedicated to the extermination of other species.

  “Were your people expecting to find this station?” the Little Swimmer asked.

  Philippe was momentarily distracted—he had noticed that there was also a White Spider sitting in the chamber—but he quickly answered in the negative. “For a long time, people had wondered what it might be like to meet aliens, but the reality of it was quite different.”

  “That is surprising,” said the Little Swimmer. “Although your people did not know what it would be like to meet aliens, they did know that someday they would meet aliens.”

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand,” said Philippe. “My people imagined that one day they might meet aliens—they thought that it could happen—but they had no sure knowledge that it would happen. It was purely a subject for fiction.”

  “There were no prophecies,” said the alien.

  “No, no prophecies, nothing like that,” said Philippe. “Just imagination.”

  “Since your people had no idea other than ideas created in fiction regarding what to expect, how did they react to discovering the aliens?”

  “People were split,” Philippe replied. “On the one hand, some people thought that the aliens would be hostile and would attack us. There was another group who thought that the aliens would solve all of humanity’s problems and answer all of humanity’s questions. And there were a lot of people who didn’t know quite what to think.”

  “There was no agreement regarding what the aliens might do, and there were people who were very puzzled,” said the alien.

  “Yes, I would say that’s a fair description—most people were very puzzled,” said Philippe.

  “And yet you came to the station anyway.”

  “Well, we wanted to know,” said Philippe. “There were very few people who were so fearful that they would rather not know. We’re curious people.”

  The alien asked Philippe about his reception on the station, which gave him an opportunity to praise the Swimmers and the role they played.

  It was also, he decided, an opportunity to ask some questions of his own. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was your purpose in coming aboard this station? What did you or do you hope to accomplish?”

  The walls of the chamber began to vibrate, and a very deep rumbling began. I guess the studio is answering that question, thought Philippe, as his earplant began to speak.

  “For an extremely long time, our people fought each other,” rumbled the Big Swimmer. “The
Big Swimmers and the Little Swimmers were engaged in a competitive relationship. Each people wanted more room in which to live, and each encroached on the other’s territory. Each developed technology to drive the other out, and in the most shameful period of our history, each attempted to enslave the other for the sole benefit of one people.

  “There was one positive aspect of this disgraceful time—it was the time of the development of our translation technology. Initially developed to help one people command the other, it became the means for us to truly communicate, and through communication, to develop understanding and eventually respect for one another.

  “This ushered in a new period in our history, a period of symbiosis. We realized that by working in cooperation each people could flourish beyond what was hoped for before. Our technology improved dramatically, so much so that we were able to greatly expand our joint territory, assuring plentiful resources for each of our people, and to travel into space.

  “When we were contacted by the Hosts, we were delighted to join them in their station. We hope to draw many more people into symbiotic relationships, enabling them to communicate and live securely. By doing so, we believe that we will better their lives and our own.”

  The rumbling stopped, and everything was quiet for a few moments.

  Philippe hated to break the silence—there was something reverential about it—but felt he must say something.

  “Thank you so much for sharing your history with me. I feel your goal is a noble one, and I also hope to see it fulfilled.”

  “Thank you,” said the splotched alien. “While we have had success in assisting auditory communication, non-auditory communication remains technologically unassisted, which is a source of concern for us.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Philippe.

  “Watch me, and tell me what you think I am communicating,” said the splotched one. It suddenly thrust all its tentacles outward as its orange spots turned red and its violet background turned indigo.

  “You’re startled,” said Philippe.

  “You are incorrect, I am sorry to inform you,” said the splotched one, returning to its normal color and shape. “That is a greeting that one might use with a friend. Do you have a non-auditory way of greeting a friend?”

  “We might smile, like this,” said Philippe, grinning broadly.

  “So you display an orifice,” said the alien. “Is that a reproductive orifice?”

  “No,” said Philippe.

  He could hear the SFers sniggering into his earplant. “It can be one,” Shanti muttered.

  “Shh!” he said, hoping that wouldn’t translate. “It’s mostly used for food intake. And speech. And breathing.”

  “So an important orifice,” said the alien.

  “Yes.”

  “Hmmm,” came Shanti’s voice, sexily.

  “Shh!” he said again.

  They wound up the interview with more thank-yous and flattery, and the Big Swimmer extracted Philippe from its maw, gently putting him down exactly where it had picked him up. It swam away slowly, disappearing into the black.

  Philippe paddled up to the surface of the water and hauled himself onto the platform. No one was there, and his tether was trailing over the edge of the ramp. He followed it, walking over to the ramp and pulling off his hood.

  The four SFers and Max were standing on the floor, cramped around a small device Max was holding. When Philippe stepped onto the ramp, the soldiers began applauding, Shanti slowly and with a wry smile, the men enthusiastically.

  The noise startled Max, so Philippe asked them to stop.

  “Guy, you’re a star!” said Patch.

  It turned out that Max had whatever the Host equivalent of a scroll was, and that the interview had been broadcast all over the station as it was conducted—an experience the SFers all agreed was “weird” because the interview was broadcast in universal translator code, so they were getting Philippe’s actual words over the com mike and his translated words at the same time.

  “Anything that didn’t translate?” Philippe asked.

  “Shhh!” they all said, and burst into laughter. Max looked very confused.

  “Oh, yeah, one other thing,” said Bubba. “The marine animals—that didn’t farking work. You’d say like, ‘A dolphin, which is a kind of marine animal,’ and it would come through, ‘a dolphin,’ I mean, ‘a marine animal’—”

  “It would come through, ‘a marine animal, which is a kind of marine animal,’” said Raoul.

  “Yeah, like that,” said Bubba. “It didn’t make any gosh-darned sense.”

  “OK,” said Philippe. “Did anybody bring a towel?”

  Nobody had, so he wound up shaking himself dry as best he could and putting his suit on over his wet lonjons. Max had understood enough of his question to realize that there was a problem involving the lack of a certain piece of cloth, and Philippe had to repeatedly assure him that it was nothing of any great import.

  “You have really done so much for us, I don’t see how we could possibly repay you,” he said as they walked back.

  “Repay?” said Max. “There is no need for repayment. Your presence on this station is a tremendous gift to us. I merely am attempting with no expectation of success to repay you for such a significant gift.”

  “That is an extremely kind thing to say,” Philippe said. “Nonetheless, I insist that you refrain from escorting us to every meeting. This one was quite long, and it makes me feel bad to think that you might spend this much time at every meeting.”

  “I wish only to assist you,” said Max.

  “And you are a tremendous help to us,” Philippe assured him. “You help us with so many things, and we are so grateful for it. I fear we will exhaust you, and I would feel terrible were that to happen.”

  “I accept your request,” said Max. “I will no longer escort you to and from meetings.”

  They stood for a minute, slightly uncomfortably. Philippe had simply been trying to be considerate, but he was beginning to wonder if he had pushed too hard and had caused the alien offense.

  Max suddenly looked excited. “We shall repay you in another form,” he said. “I heard you say to the Swimmers that your people are curious and came to this station seeking knowledge.”

  “That is true,” said Philippe.

  “We could help provide you with some of our knowledge. I will go consult with my people and find out what knowledge might be best for you to have and most easily transmitted to you. I shall contact you again soon.”

  And with that, Max peeled off from the group, surrendering his role of escort a bit sooner than Philippe had expected. Fortunately they had already returned to their floor, so they were able to find their living area with no problem.

  Philippe went into his office and saw two widgets on his desk. He ignored them and went into his bedroom, where he changed out of his wet dress suit and lonjons into dry lonjons and casual clothing, in the process pulling off his translation and com mikes and putting them onto his desk.

  He hung the lonjons and suit. The lonjons would dry without any problem, of course, but Philippe was not so sure about the suit. It was a travel suit and not very wet, so it might be all right, but eventually he would have to get it cleaned, and he doubted that whatever process the SF used on their uniforms would be kind to his clothing. The travel suits always took a beating, of course—the Sudan was hardly the place to keep a wardrobe pristine—but Philippe liked to keep the creases crisp for as long as possible.

  He went back out to his desk and picked up one of the widgets, which was about two centimeters across and fit nicely in the curve of his index finger. He pointed it at the memory base and pushed the widget’s button with his thumb. He had set the station to ping once the memory was transferred; it did so, and Philippe repeated the process with the second widget. He sat down and opened his office folder.

  “Oh, dear,” he said.

  He had over a thousand messages. A quick glace showed messa
ges from Space Authority, DiploCorps, Union Intelligence, Special Forces, Union Police, and a half-dozen other branches of the Union government, plus queries from several national governments as well.

  It was ridiculous—scanning the subject headings, he could see that many of the queries were repetitious or impossible to answer, and others seemed to be about things mentioned in the soldiers’ reports.

  He closed his office folder and opened his personal folder. There were twelve messages, all of them from Kathy.

  The volume of messages made him hesitate about deleting them. Even Kathy wouldn’t send him a dozen messages for no good reason, right?

  But it was hard to tell. He had met Kathy several months before in Ottawa, where he had been sent after the Guantánamo fiasco. The cushy assignment to DiploCorps headquarters was supposed to be a combination of a break and a reward, but after what he had been through, Ottawa, with its endless lavish receptions and trivial trade disputes between wealthy partners, revolted Philippe. Diplomatic work there struck him as inherently self-indulgent and meaningless, and the DiploCorps staff seemed to gleefully embrace the decadence: Most of them were unapologetically more interested in scoring free champagne at parties than in making the world a better place.

  Perhaps he would have seen things differently under different circumstances, but Ottawa disgusted Philippe, and his feelings were shared fully by Kathy. She was support staff—a highly intelligent, highly educated woman who spent her time as a glorified receptionist in an era when a receptionist was an anachronistic affectation, like a handlebar mustache or a tie. She was a striking brunet, whippet-thin, with a face like a fox. She had a biting wit, especially when it came to the pretension and hypocrisy of the DiploCorps.

  It took a while before he realized how utterly consumed she was by bitterness and rage; how she held on to a job she genuinely hated because she so desperately needed to hate everyone and everything, every moment of every day. For a brief while, he was content to be her whipping boy, but eventually whatever underlying need he had had for punishment had been fulfilled, and he broke it off. Her fury had been epic.

  But twelve messages in one day seemed excessive even for Kathy, and it raised the possibility that something had happened—a family emergency, something he could help with.

  Philippe shut his personal folder without deleting them. He would look at them later.

  He decided to write a report on his meeting with the Swimmers. It occurred to him that he’d probably get another thousand messages asking for the interview broadcast if he didn’t include it, so he decided to ask Shanti how much the SFers had been able to film.

  He stepped out of his office. Shanti’s door was open, but he could hear voices. Philippe looked in. Five-Eighths was standing in front of Shanti’s desk, while she was standing on the other side of her desk, in front of her chair.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt,” Philippe said.

  “Come on in. This will just take a minute,” said Shanti, in a pleasant voice.

  She turned to Five-Eighths and her eyes hardened. She snapped, “I can’t believe you’re asking this. If I asked you, I would never be MC again.”

  “I’m not trying to command anyone; I just think that we need to add to the diversity of the roster,” Five-Eighths replied. “And it’s not like you’re a Moe anymore.”

  “Thanks so much for bringing that up, asshole. What’s the roster usually like, anyway? You’ve got seven guys and half the women in the unit—that’s pretty fucking good.”

  “Half the women is one fucking woman. Usually the locals can pick up the slack. But these—” Five-Eighths put his hands in the air, at a loss for words.

  “You expected better?” asked Shanti. They looked at each other for a moment, and she let out a small bark of incredulous laughter. “You honestly expected better! Holy shit, Five, you’re like a casualty of SF VPE.”

  Philippe found himself wondering when his translator would kick in.

  “It’s not fucking funny,” said Five-Eighths.

  “No, it’s fucking hysterical. God, I knew you were a pervert, but I never knew you were stupid. Look, motherfucker, you’ve got eight people, a huge library of VPE, and two perfectly good hands—”

  “Eight people including me,” Five-Eighths cut in.

  “And it’s not like you’ve never gone outside your species before, farm boy. Don’t come to me because you lack imagination.”

  Shanti stepped around her desk, putting her face right into Five-Eighths’ face. Her voice, which had had a slight note of amusement to it, was now hard and icy, like a diamond.

  “Do you think I owe you something?” she asked. “Do you think I’m obligated to be on the roster? You bring this up again, I’ll tear your balls off. And then? I will report your sorry ass. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  Five-Eighths gave her a dirty look and stormed out.

  “Hey, Trang, can you shut the door?” Shanti asked, calmly.

  Philippe did.

  “Wha-wha-what was that about?” he stammered.

  “Horizontal duty,” she said, sitting down and checking something on a scroll.

  Philippe drew a blank. “What?” he asked.

  Shanti looked at him quizzically. “The Yoopers don’t—? Oh, OK, I guess this is something we do different from them. When an SF unit goes out on a long-term mission like this one, we draw up a roster—it’s basically a sex thing. If you’re on it, then you’re available for, you know, sex-type action. Five wants more people on it, so he was asking me to sign on—which people are totally not supposed to do, just so you know. Anyway—not that I am asking—but you should know that if you want to be on it, it’s totally available to you. It’s OK that you’re not SF, we’re all kind of stuck out here.”

  “You’re very generous, but I don’t think so,” said Philippe, trying to keep any sarcastic or judgmental tones out of his voice.

  Judging from her expression, he wasn’t very successful. “Hey,” she said. “I may just be a dumb Sister Fucker, but the roster? It works. It’s life-affirming, it builds morale, and it helps members of a unit bond.”

  “You’re not on it,” Philippe said, flatly.

  “The only reason I’m not on it is that I just got divorced, and I really don’t feel like dealing with it,” said Shanti, irritably. “Everyone’s been on the roster or will be on the roster at some point—even the Moes.”

  “And . . . what’s a Moe?” asked Philippe. “Aside from Mo in the unit.”

  Shanti smiled. “Yeah, Mo’s not a Moe,” she said. “Moe means married or otherwise . . . exclusive, I think.”

  Philippe stifled a quick laugh. “I don’t think you’d stay married long if you signed on to this roster.”

  Shanti’s smile vanished. “It’s more complicated than you think, OK? It can be a problem: One of the reasons—one—I got a divorce was that my husband was putting himself on the roster. But it really depends—after something traumatic, like a big firefight or something, lots of people who wouldn’t normally go on the roster do, and nobody says shit about it. With my husband the problem was that he was on the roster the first fucking day. And he did it in a unit where he knew I had friends and he knew it would get back to me. Nothing says ‘Fuck this marriage’ quite like that.”

  Philippe sighed and shook his head. “You know, no one else does things this way.”

  “That’s why we’re the Special Forces,” she said, dryly. “Regardless of what you think, the roster does work. It makes things easier on the locals, and it cuts down on the Eve-teasing. I mean, the SF is almost entirely guys, and the average age is something like 22. So you’re better off just telling them how to handle their sexuality instead of having them try to figure it out themselves. Unless you’re Five, and then there’s pretty much no hope.”

  “You mean Five-Eighths?” said Philippe. “Yeah, he’s—well, he’s got an interesting nickname.”

  “If it bothers you, just call him Five, that’s w
hat I do,” Shanti said. “Anyway, at least he’s been busy—he’s been mapping the station for us.”

  “Really! That’s useful.”

  “Yeah. He’s a good soldier, despite the whole pervert thing.”

  Philippe suddenly remembered that he had not come into Shanti’s office to discuss the sexual mores of her soldiers. “Anyway, I came by because I was wondering if you managed to film the broadcast the Swimmers made.”

  “Oh, yeah, I got the whole thing, I think,” Shanti pulled the camera off her uniform and pointed at her memory station. An open scroll on her desk sprang to life, showing a close-up shot of a Host hand holding a screen. “Here it is—here you are!”

  Philippe looked at it.

  “Great,” he said. “But where’s the sound?”

  “Oh, shit,” Shanti said. “Did it not work right?”

  “I don’t think it’s broken—you can hear background noise.”

  “Oh, fuck. You know what, the mike didn’t pick up the universal code.”

  “Right, right,” said Philippe. “Your mike was recording sound, but the Swimmers broadcast the thing in code—I mean, what good is a station-wide broadcast in English, right?”

  “Fuck!” exclaimed Shanti, slamming her hand on the desk. “I’ve got to talk to Vip and Thorpe about this and make sure all our fucking surveillance isn’t this way. This is so fucking stupid.”

  “Hey, hey, it’s not all horrible. Sound could be useful,” said Philippe.

  “Fucking chirps and rattles? I mean, yeah, you’re right, we might need sound, too, but we need to be picking up the universal code on everything.” She stood up, and then picked up the scroll again. “Oh, wait, let me give you—OK, there’s the video of your fucking mime interview, I’m sorry about that. And this is some of the stuff from Baby’s report that I though you might like. It’s all in your folder now.”

  “Thanks,” said Philippe.

  She bolted down the hall, and Philippe went back to his office. He opened the office folder again, which now contained one more message.

  At least this one will be helpful, Philippe thought.

  The message contained both the video and Baby’s report. Out of curiosity, Philippe looked at the report first. It was pretty a-grammatical—Baby had obviously recorded it and then converted it into text.

  But the content was quite worthwhile. Baby had been on guard duty outside the front door with another soldier when a Host—who was neither Max nor Moritz—approached her. He was accompanied by a second Host who was not outfitted with translation equipment.

  “The Host guy heard Doug call me Baby,” the report read, “so he wanted to know if I really was some baby. I told him that I weren’t no baby but a grown-up woman, and he got real excited and wanted to know if we had two sexes. I told him we did and that Doug was a man.

  “So then he asked me if we stayed men and women all our life, so I told him we did. He told me that the Hosts also stayed men or women all their life, and that them and us are the only two people on the station who have two sexes and that don’t change. I said, ‘How do you change sex?’—I thought maybe he meant an operation—but he said that some of the other species will change sex depending on their age or other things without no kind of medical procedure. I told him that sounded weird, and he said that aliens are mysterious and that mysteries are good things.

  “We then tried to figure out if we really are the same that way, it sounds like we pretty much are. Women Hosts get pregnant and have babies, although when I tried to ask him about nursing he didn’t seem to understand me. He was really excited that I was a woman, and then he said he was surprised at my size, because he thinks I’m real small—that’s why he thought I might actually be a baby. It turns out that women Hosts are really enormous and don’t get out much, so they don’t go into space. I asked what they do then, and he said they do different stuff but basically it all sounds like desk work. I told him I wouldn’t make a good Host woman because I can’t stand to just sit.

  “What else? Oh, yeah, I asked him why his buddy didn’t have translation gear, and he said it was because the guy weren’t no priest like he were. But then he had said that he was married, so I said that most Earth priests don’t get married. He said that on the Host planet, being a priest is really a big help to finding a wife, which is pretty hard to do, because there aren’t a lot of women. He said that most women have five or six husbands, so they like priests because they are always here and not underfoot. He also said that Max and Moritz are brothers-in-law and priests, but they ain’t in the same order, and he’s in a different order from either of them two.”

  Good Lord, thought Philippe, she really missed her calling. Union Intelligence should recruit her.

  There was a banging on his door. “Trang, we need you,” Shanti yelled.

  Philippe opened the door. “What’s up?” he asked.

  “The aliens have come,” said Shanti. “And they brought presents!”

  He started to head for the no man’s zone, but Ofay, who was standing by the door, made him go back for his gloves and his hood. Back in his room, he remembered to grab the translation mike off his desk, sticking it onto his shirt and hoping the adhesive still had holding power. He joined the soldiers waiting to go outside.

  Cut and Feo were standing outside with a Host, who was thrumming heartily and holding out what looked like saddlebags.

  “He can’t speak,” said Cut.

  “He probably doesn’t have translation gear; some of them don’t,” said Philippe. He reached out for the bags and took them, bowing deeply. The Host seemed satisfied and turned to go.

  “What’s in there?” asked Feo.

  “Knowledge, I guess,” said Philippe.

  “What are we supposed to do with it?” asked Shanti.

  “With knowledge?”

  “No, with alien things. Like, weird things from aliens.”

  Philippe was genuinely shocked. “A diplomat is never supposed to turn down a gift,” he said.

  Shanti rolled her eyes. “That may be, but it’s kind of a security issue,” she said. “I mean, we’re really not supposed to have alien stuff in our living area.”

  “It’s really very insulting to reject a gift, in every culture,” Philippe replied. “I cannot risk insulting these people like that, especially not this early.”

  “Look—” she began.

  “Hey, guys.” Cut interrupted. “More aliens coming.”

  Philippe handed the bags to Shanti as two Centaurs—better start thinking of them as Cyclopes, Philippe thought—walked up. They were grayish-brown and covered in fur, with no obvious head. He wondered again if those eye spots were actual eyes, and if the Cyclopes could really see behind them. They were both shorter than Philippe, but quite broad, and had a rolling walk.

  “Are you the human diplomat?” asked one.

  “Yes, I am. I am very pleased to meet you.”

  “We met once before. I am pleased to meet you a second time.”

  “We saw the broadcast of your formal meeting with the Swimmers,” said the second Cyclops. “We were wondering if you intended to hold a formal meeting with us as well.”

  “I would be delighted to meet with you formally,” Philippe replied. “I hope to meet with all the people on this station formally.”

  “When are you planning to hold a formal meeting with us?” said the first. “We have received no communication about a formal meeting.”

  “I’m sure you will be contacted soon. I certainly wish to meet with you, um, formally, and I hope your people and my people become friends.”

  “When are you planning to hold a formal meeting with us?” said the first. “Is it soon?”

  “Unfortunately, I am not certain,” said Philippe. “Our liaisons with the Hosts are scheduling the formal meetings on our behalf.”

  “If the Hosts are handling that task, then you will hold a formal meeting with us last,” the Cyclops said. “As you will discover, if you allo
w the Hosts to handle your affairs, they will not always place your interests first.”

  He turned and walked away.

  “Again, we are emphatically happy to meet you now, and we anticipate with pleasure the time when you will hold a formal meeting with us. Good-bye,” said the second Cyclops, who then followed the first.

  “What the—” said Feo.

  “Shhh,” said Philippe. “Not here.”

  “Whaddya think?” said Shanti.

  Philippe turned around, ready to shush her, too. But Shanti was talking to the doctor, who had come out of the living area and was examining the Hosts’ gifts.

  “Well, we’ve got an isolation unit in the infirmary, so we could keep them there. Of course, if anyone comes down with space Ebola, we’ll have to figure out another place for them,” George said.

  “For now, let’s put them in that unit,” said Shanti.

  They headed back into the no man’s zone, with Shanti carrying the bags. As they waited for the door to open, Philippe gave George a quick rundown of what Max had told him to expect—knowledge that would be both useful and easy to grasp.

  “So it sounds like they’re giving us something that is exotic, yet familiar,” George said, thoughtfully. “Hmm.”

  “We could just ask Max what it is,” said Philippe.

  “Don’t do that yet,” said the doctor. “Let me take a crack at it.”

  The door opened, and George snatched the bags out of Shanti’s hands and took off down the hall to the infirmary.

  “I note a certain spring to his step,” said Philippe.

  “The man loves his science,” replied Shanti. “Hey, did you read Baby’s report?”

  “Oh, yeah, interesting,” said Philippe, gesturing for her to join him in his office. “It sounds like the Hosts have a real theocracy going—the priests are the ones who get to travel into space and have the translation gear.”

  “And get married. What did you think of the whole women-stay-at-home thing?”

  They speculated for a bit until Philippe decided to pull up the report to re-read part of it, and Shanti noticed the mass of messages.

  “Man, you really need to clear out your office folder.”

  Philippe sighed. “And that’s all from today. I mean, look at this—I swear I have a message from every person on Earth who has the security clearance to read our reports.”

  Shanti glanced over the folder. “Oh, fuck,” she said. “I know what’s happening. They can’t talk to us, see, so everyone’s doing an end run around our people and putting it all on you. What you gotta do is do what we do—we got people on Earth whose job it is to handle this shit. Our messages go to them, and we only get messages if there’s a question they really can’t answer that isn’t totally stupid. It really cuts down on this kind of bullshit. I mean, look at this—even if you made sure everything was in text mode and just scanned it over, it would take you all day. You don’t have time for this kind of shit.”

  “I really don’t,” said Philippe.

  “Yeah,” said Shanti, in a completely different tone of voice. “Oh, OK—another alien, we’ll come out. What? Really? Fuck! Com Trang in.”

  There was a brief pause. “Hey, Trang?” Cut’s voice was in his ear. “Um, we got a White Spider out here at the outer doorway, and I think he wants to see you.”

  “I’ll—” Philippe realized that his com mike was in his suit jacket, which he wasn’t wearing. He started looking around for the mike he left on his desk, but Shanti pulled her collar toward him so he could speak into hers. “I’ll be right out.”

  “I don’t know if you can do that,” said Cut. “He’s standing right on the door, and he’s kind of pawing at it. He’s not saying anything, but I think he’s trying to get in.”